| / English Dictionary |
SLAVERY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The practice of owning slaves
Synonyms:
slaveholding; slavery
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("slavery" is a kind of...):
pattern; practice (a customary way of operation or behavior)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Work done under harsh conditions for little or no pay
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("slavery" is a kind of...):
labor; labour; toil (productive work (especially physical work done for wages))
Derivation:
slave (work very hard, like a slave)
Sense 3
Meaning:
The state of being under the control of another person
Synonyms:
bondage; slavery; thraldom; thrall; thralldom
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("slavery" is a kind of...):
subjection; subjugation (forced submission to control by others)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "slavery"):
bonded labor (a practice in which employers give high-interest loans to workers whose entire families then labor at low wages to pay off the debt; the practice is illegal in the United States)
servitude (state of subjection to an owner or master or forced labor imposed as punishment)
serfdom; serfhood; vassalage (the state of a serf)
Context examples:
The slaves were obsessed by their own slavery.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
But my enthusiasm was checked by my anxiety, and I appeared rather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other unwholesome trade than an artist occupied by his favourite employment.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
They have purchased your slave judges, they have debauched your slave legislatures, and they have forced to worse horrors than chattel slavery your slave boys and girls.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
For myself, there was one reward I promised myself from my detested toils—one consolation for my unparalleled sufferings; it was the prospect of that day when, enfranchised from my miserable slavery, I might claim Elizabeth and forget the past in my union with her.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
He tried to tell it to Joe, but Joe had visions of his own, infallible schemes whereby he would escape the slavery of laundry-work and become himself the owner of a great steam laundry.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
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